Cheery Article

Quite the clever lot aren't we.....always have been, it would appear.
Care
Charlie
_____________
Excerpt:
Full article (long) at:
http://countercurrents.org/kotke120907.htm
By William M. H. Kötke
12 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
We are all looking at the end of the world as we know it. Our attention
is focused on the holes in the ozone layer, planet warming, peak oil,
the spread of DU weapons, the collapse of the house of credit cards,
and the prospect of the planetary financial elite quickly establishing
fascist control of the planet. Below this threshold of conscious
awareness our biological survival systems are rapidly eroding. At this
point some twenty percent of the planet’s soils erode each twenty-five
year period. Each year at least two hundred thousand acres of irrigated
crop-lands go out of production because of salinization or
water-logging and experts say that sixty to eighty percent of all
irrigated acreage is due to follow the eight to ten million acres that
have historically gone into ruination from irrigation. The total
drylands of the planet are 7.9 billion acres of which 61% are
desertified, that is, driven by human abuse toward uselessness.
Globally, 23% of all arable crop lands have been lost since 1945
through human use and experts say that all arable land on the planet
will be ruined in 200 years.
It is estimated that prior to the human culture that we term
civilization, one third of the planet was covered with closed canopy
forest. Now forests cover 10% of the earth. In the oceans the collapse
of major fish stocks is increasing. At least eight stocks have
collapsed beginning with the Antarctic Blue Whale in 1935 to the
Peruvian Anchovy stock collapse in the late twentieth century. Since
1984 the world fish catch has been shrinking even with greater
investment and the taking of what in former times were considered
“trash” fish. Of the 32 ocean fisheries, 30 are in decline and some of
those are collapsing. At the same time coral reefs and mangrove swamps
which are considered the “incubators” of sea life are dwindling
precipitously.
Soil is the basis of the planetary terrestrial life. In the best of
circumstances such as old growth forests and prairies, soil builds at
the rate of one inch each three hundred to a thousand years. It is
being exhausted and is eroding away. The way that the industrial system
has continued to increase the food supply is by trading off soil
fertility for fossil fuel energy through artificial fertilizers. Now,
nearly half of the world’s people eat because of the added production
of food caused by artificial fertilizers being injected into depleted
soils and the use of all of the other accouterments of fossil- fueled
industrial agriculture.. Half of the planetary population are hanging
out on a limb essentially eating petroleum! Now as the population
continues to explode we reach peak oil and its decline. We do not need
to continue filling in the details. Our intellect can draw the
conclusion for us. An exponentially exploding world population with
increasing material consumption, based on dwindling resources and a
dying planet, won’t work!
But this is not a new phenomenon as some would assume. This culture of
civilization, of empire, was an ecological catastrophe when it began
some eight thousand years ago. It is this culture and its inculcated
reality-view that is the disaster. Half of China was once a great
temperate zone forest. That forest was gone before recorded history,
destroyed by the Han Chinese Empire. The Indus River Valley Empire had
ecologically destroyed its habitat before recorded history. We do have
recorded history of the Sumerian and Babylonian empires. We know they
decimated the forests and overgrazed the landscape. One third of the
land in Iraq that should be arable right now is still so salinized from
imperial irrigation four and five thousand years ago that it cannot be
used. The erosion material coming down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
from that destroyed watershed has filled in 185 miles of the gulf. As
we follow the history of this type of human culture we find the
Mid-East ecologically denuded. The empires of Greece and Rome used
Turkey and North Africa as “breadbaskets.” Now, there are towns in
Turkey, North Africa and even in Italy that were port cities during
those empires which are now ten and fifteen miles from the water - all
filled in with erosion material from the ecologically destroyed
landscapes. Then we go on to the destruction of the great forests of
Europe and now the whole world. These examples and many more are
indelible effects on the world ecosystem which have not recovered in
thousands of years.

Oh Charlie, why do you immerse yourself in all this Doom and Gloom?
Get out and look at all the beauties of our world! There are many good
people out there.
I spent all day Sunday in a gorgeous mountain meadow in the Sierra.
It was not always gorgeous...it served as a stage stop in the 1870s
with a hotel and grazing for the horses and the meadow fed over 150
head of cattle. It was eroded and overgrazed in 1997. Restoration was
begun and now in 2007 there are willows and alders, and grasses.
The creek flows without erosion. There are wildflowers throughout the
grasses. Trout in the creek, swallows, kingfishers and chickadees
fly about. There are snowshoe hare. We saw tracks of fox/coyote.
and black bear droppings. Canada geese nest there. New Lodgepole
Pine seedlings are coming up. It was a beautiful sunny day, and no
smoke from the forest fire. Fourteen of us enjoyed a perfect day.
Please try to get out and see what is beautiful and BE HAPPY.
It is easy to be discouraged I know, but I hate to see you so
depressed. Don't concentrate on all this stuff. Most of us do the
best we can.....................
Emilie
NorCal

Life is difficult for me, Emilie. I agree with you and try the best I
can, but..........
I do appreciate the good people I meet, IRL and online, yourself
included, and I appreciate the concern you express. Thank you.
Care, peace and love to you, my friend
Charlie

--
"If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the
worst." -- Thomas Hardy

Don't worry, be happy. I'm sorry Emilie, you know better than that. You
found a treasured corner of the biosphere. You know how good it can be
but in you heart of hearts, you know that we are all just hoping that
what we think is going to happen, doesn't. We see the train coming at
us and we close our eyes and hope for the best.
Right now, everyone should get off their asses and email their political
representatives and tell them how they feel about what is going on
politically or ecologically. If you don't know what's going on then stop
watching Fox News and you will get smarter almost instantly.
http://countercurrents.org/kotke120907.htm is the article.
The prognosis for us and our planet is not good if we keep on doing what
we have been doing. Fortunately for our planet, we seem to be on a
lemming's trajectory out of planetary concern and the planet may yet
heal itself without us. Not that that will help the polar bears, who we
seem to have already killed but are not dead yet.
To all who don't want to think about the impending train wreck, let me
recommend "smack". Enjoy it while you can. With American help, there
seems to be a lot of it around these days.

LOL........thanks for the laugh, my friend. I needed this.
Back in the groove and feelin' better. For the time bein'.

Now Billy, surely you don't mean..........nah......not one of the
'merican TLAs........
Though....... some often need a bit o' help dealin' with the stresses
of day to day in the usOFa. Some of us just don't believe in gettin'
our relief from BigPharma, iffen's ya know what I mean, Vern.
A Guinness a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Char...urrpp..lie

Nice to read you Charlie and welcome back. My computer time is short and
will be for a few more months, so excuse me while I scratch a particular
itch. a piece of ice in the Arctic, twice the size of Great Britain
disappeared last week. The polar bears are to be decimated.
Nutritionists have to hem and haw when recommending sea food because of
the methyl mercury in it. Near Emilie, the Klamath River is nearly
barren of coho and steelhead. Our governments wage unnecessary wars and
subsidizes food that makes us unhealthy, both in the name of short term
profits. First we are told that tobacco doesn't cause cancer, then we
find that it does. We are told humans don't make acid rain, then it
turns out that we do. We were told that people weren't responsible for
the ozone depletion. Turns out we are. Now the people corporate and
theocratic types that Bush caters to tell us that humans don't cause
global warming.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm
The scientists around the world are doing everything they can to signal
a disaster is underway but Bush uses the authority of his office to push
out shills to question the vast body of knowledge who can't get space
from the 10 news organizations that control just about everything we
hear and see, that is supposed to pass for news.
Email your representatives.

WIll give me time for reflection and introspection and some study, then
when you are presumably out of harness and stalled for the winter
months, we'll see what happens and have some fun in preperation for the
next season of planting and things garden related.
"When winter comes rollin' around, we'll be lucky to get out of
town"....apologies to John Prine for liberties taken with the lyrics.

Yeah, I remember this incident.
Hey, have you seen this one.......even in the CorpPropMedia.....as
evidenced by this link.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id582433
Shoot man, we'll be growing greens north of the artic circle before
long. Iceberg lettuce.

Of course, there is the problem of determining which battles to enjoin
and always the tendency on my part to throw up hands and say eff it and
crawl back under the log.
An often recalled quote by HL Mencken comes to mind, but given the
climate and despicable practices being practiced by the practioners of
the digital black arts, I'll just leave ya's to wonder about
it........summat 'bout black flags and beginnings......seems to be an
allegorical statement, but one never knows.

Crawlin' under a log ain't gonna help. If things go bad, there will be
no place to hide.
Talk to your representatives.
If you find that the Republicrat sock puppets ain't believable, then
vote for some one from a third party. The more votes a third party gets
the more money they'll have to spread their word and weaken the
Republicrats who are beholden to the same corporate finances. This
keptocracy has to end or we are all screwed.
In the last 4 years, personal income hasn't risen. Corporate income has
increased 71 %. Who votes Republican? Fools and corporations. Democrats
ain't much better. Bomb the world yo peace? Yeah, sure, right.

Hi Charlie!
Goggle Earth is really neat. Does all sorts of thing and smart people
are writing interesting tools like the one listed below.
Bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth
http://earth.google.com /
http://www.gearthblog.com /
........................
Google Earth layer helps mapping industrial pollutants
29 June 2007
Morelia, Mexico, 27 June 2007: The environmental officials of Canada,
Mexico and US have collaboratively launched initiative on tracking air
pollution in North America. The three countries have introduced an
interactive Google Earth mapping tool, which will expand public access
to information on air pollutants.
The officials had gathered in Morelia, for the regular annual meeting of
the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an organization
created by Canada, Mexico and US to address regional environmental
concerns as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The
talks focused on harmonizing air quality data between the three
countries and strengthening Mexico¹s pollutant monitoring and reporting
ability.
Using the Google Earth mapping service, the CEC¹s map layer plots over
33,000 North American industrial facilities that reported releases and
transfers of pollutants in 2004, the most recent data available from all
three countries.
The tool allows viewers to find industrial facilities located near their
homes, their workplaces, or their schools. They can learn about the
pollution profile of each facility, including which pollutants are
generated and how the facility handles them.
Information used in the mapping tool comes from publicly accessible
³pollutant release and transfer registers,² or PRTRs, maintained
separately by the three North American countries: the National Pollutant
Release Inventory (NPRI) in Canada, the Registro de Emisiones y
Transferencias de Contaminantes (RETC) in Mexico, and the Toxics Release
Inventory (TRI) in the United States.
The mapping tool developed by the CEC, can be downloaded from:
http://www.cec.org/naatlas/prtr/North-America-PRTR-2004.kmz
Source : http://www.ens-newswire.com

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:28:55 -0400, William Wagner
Hi Bill! Long time no see, good to be back.....for now anyhow.
Gotta get some different music playing and Joni outta me head....
A couple weeks with the complete works of Joni has perhaps, uh, been
enough on that side of things for a while. Any suggestions?
Care
Charlie

Roger McGuinn Live From Spain
Hard too find but all you need is someone to love you.
If you were not to follow than perhaps Mr. Spaceman may matter. Cuss
You ain't goin' nowhere. Mr. Tambourine Man when he is Turning Turn
Turning
Bill like all of us are
Knockin' On Heaven's Door 4:36 Roger McGuinn Live From Spain Rock
Live Acoustic

Hell yeah I am for real, Ann, though apparently not your requirement
for real.
I'm disappointed that you would try that line of shit on me, Ann. I
grew up with that crap and got over it long ago. I'll spare you the
vulgar, vile reply that instantly came to mind, the result of years of
conditioning.
You are right, you are none of my business.
"Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake, let us
come to a final separation." ~ Thomas Paine
Good luck
Charlie

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